


After the Storm

by rayn (Rayn)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 01:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rayn/pseuds/rayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending for EoT. A collection of the drabbles on the interactive story blog andgallifreyfell.tumblr.com</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rage and fire and he was following after them. The drums still hammered and they were a lie, and he would rain down an eternity of retribution on the time lords for that. One step, and two, and he was advancing, his only thoughts of vengeance. 

 

There were arms around him, holding him against the strain of his own body. Gallifrey was receding, and whatever the Doctor said was lost in the roar if his fury as he struggled to chase them, to visit a massacre upon them all for the damage they’d done. Long after they’d faded away, he was still screaming, bleeding energy at the emptiness they left behind. 

He hardly noticed the Doctor had been holding him up until he wasn’t. They were slumped to the floor, the Doctor a battered mess, and his body felt as if it were rotting right out from under him. Dimly, beyond his anger, through the lying drums, he knew they could not stay. 

 

“Where is your TARDIS?” he heard himself ask, his scratchy, raw voice foreign to his own ears. 

 

“It’s…I…” The Doctor looked at him from the floor, unfocused and ill. There was something like relief bleeding across his features, and he laughed, though it was a maimed, tired sound. “We’re alive. It’s…”

 

One, two, three, four, and the Doctor’s exhausted elation drained away entirely. Searching for the source of the sound, his eyes settled on the old, decrepit ape the Doctor had been palling around with. Already, he could see the way this would play out.

 

No no no! He would not be responsible for the Doctor’s death, not when he didn’t fully intend to be. It was an easy enough thing to say he needed the Doctor, he was bleeding energy everywhere and without the Doctor’s help, there’d be nothing left to salvage. Suddenly that energy had a purpose, he could make the Doctor help him, or die trying and he’d have no reason left to care.

 

The Doctor was shouting, but he wasn’t listening anymore, and maybe he never was. Vaguely, he saw the door swing open, but the world was gray around the edges, fading rapidly. The only thing he remembered after that was falling.


	2. Chapter 2

The Master was quiet, subdued even. So much of what they were was action and reaction, one forever thwarting the other, the Doctor wasn’t entirely sure what to do with all the nothing. He was alive though, alive when he shouldn’t be, and he had the Master to thank for a face he still recognized in the mirror.

Much of the Master’s hostility toward him this time around had faded, an eerie nothingness replacing it. The Master hardly spoke to him at all, and once he worked out that it wasn’t anger that kept him silent, the Doctor found himself wishing it were. Anger, he could react to, but he had no tools against numbness.

“You don’t have to stay,” he found himself blurting out, though in the scant days since he’d woken, the Master gave no indication of wanting to leave. He’d given no indication of anything at all.

“What?” The Master lifted his head a fraction from where he’d been staring out the open TARDIS door. There’d been no snarking comments about the Doctor’s driving when he’d let the doors out into empty space, and the lack of insult was unsettling in itself.

“I was just saying, I’m not going to force you to stay with me,” the Doctor tried again, the words thick and heavy on his tongue. It was harder to hide with company, harder to shield himself from his myriad of regrets when there was someone around to witness his retreat.

The Master laughed, a sad, hollow sound. “It’s funny, how you think you could.”

Another time, he might have had a retort already on his tongue. Nothing came, however, and the Doctor’s throat was full of glue as he crossed the floor of the console room, slumping down beside the Master. It was such a strange thing, his feet dangling off the edge, an arm hooked about the door frame just in case. He’d spent so many countless years looking out, excited by all the possibilities. Now, for all the company he had, all he was was lost.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s still the same face. You can quit gawking.” The Master’s voice was terse at his back as he caught his reflection. It was true though, wasn’t it? No matter how many times he glanced at a mirror or caught his reflection in shinier bits of the TARDIS’s interior, it was always the same set of features that met him. His hearts constricted every time in anticipation of a nightmare, but in the end he cheated fate.

That wasn’t entirely true either, he supposed. He’d been shackled to a noose he couldn’t slip, didn’t dare try to after the glorious failure that had been Mars. The Master had gone and done it for him though, not once but twice, and what did that make them?

He didn’t sleep the way he should have, but his body was mending, bit by bit. The cuts left behind by broken glass were fading, hardly more than faint welts across his skin. Inside though, something trembled, loose and exhausted, and he might have run from it if there’d been anywhere to go. Instead, he kept waiting with baited breath and a heart full of rain, for the tap tap tap tap that would end him. The tension in him refused to let up, but the sound never came.

Old and brought so very low, he was still alive, and didn’t that count for something? He owed extensively for that, a thank you at the very least. He’d been so caught up in the Master bleeding energy like water through a sieve, he’d forgotten to ever spare the words. Jaw working for a moment, he finally turned around. “I never…”

The rest never came. The Doctor’s gaze settled where the Master had been. Somewhere along the way, the Master had gone, and the Doctor’s words only faded in the empty space left behind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to the ask: "Has finding the source of the drums helped the Master at all?"

Whatever it was the Doctor had done to fix him, it had offered him no semblance of peace. The drums had been bearable before, back when there’d been some glorious purpose to his agony. Now there were only lies, painful as they thumped out a rhythm against his skull.

The days, or what sufficed for them, crawled by, and he got no better. Oh he wasn’t dying anymore, not the rapid, suffocating death of his failed resurrection. This was something more sinister though, an inky creeping through his veins, constantly reminding him of his utter failure, until sometimes he could scarcely breathe under the weight of it.

The Doctor tried to talk at him now and again, like he wasn’t just as much a mess, like everything was fine. The Master told himself it wasn’t that he was falling apart at the seams. He lied and said it was simply annoying to be pestered so much, until he could almost believe it. He believed enough at least to justify hiding away. No inch of the TARDIS was left untraveled, and the bath he retreated to was more a matter of distance than any real desire for one.

Insanity had been so much easier to ignore, to bear when he could not feign ignorance, when it had meant something. Purpose had spared him the acute loss as his mind drifted from him, words tumbling together in meaningless cacophony. Now he was only a pitiful mad man with a mouth full of nonsense and a hammering in his head.

They were slipping again, his thoughts, fleeing from the disaster that was his mind. As he sank further in the water, they only seemed to seep away more rapidly, until he was only barely aware he’d ever been more at all. Swallowing against the ill feeling of losing himself entirely, a low, bereft noise scraped past his lips. The Master squeezed his eyes shut against the way they prickled and burned, but there was nothing to hold onto. He could only ever let go in the end.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to the question, "Ten, has the Master tried to escape yet?"

 He wasn’t sure what had ever given him the idea their situation would be manageable. They hadn’t killed each other yet. He’d as much as said the Master wasn’t a prisoner, and he stayed anyway, even if he kept to himself. It was just as well, that last part. The Doctor was slowly piecing himself back together, but he ached and was listless, and he hardly needed an audience.

                Still, the Master had  _stayed_ , and some foolish, naïve part of him had hoped the worst was over. They’d been friends once, so many centuries ago, and he never truly stopped caring for his friends. It was something to focus on at least. If the Master would stay, maybe he could help to stop the drums.

                It was such a petty argument, so small the Doctor barely took note. They nearly always bickered when they managed to talk at all. If the Doctor was simply relieved that they were communicating at all, if he failed to notice the manic tinge to the Master’s mannerisms, he couldn’t be entirely blamed for hoping.

                When the Master had shoved him, it honestly seemed more fear than malice. The Doctor stumbled, back of his head cracking against the wall, and other circumstances, it might’ve been funny the way the Master flinched sympathetically, even as he made it worse. Metal clamped around his wrist, and the Doctor found himself cuffed to the TARDIS before he could get away.

                “Oi! That was completely unnecessary!” he squawked when the Master stepped back, just out of reach. “I  _told_  you you’re not a prisoner here. You don’t have to chain me up just to get away. I’ll take you wherever you want to go”

                “Get away?” The Master asked, low and furious and desperate. “Where is it you think I’m going to  _go_?”

                “Wherever you want,” the Doctor tried to offer, but he knew it was futile. Even if the Master left, wherever he went would be a prison, doomed to living linearly for the rest of his lives.

                “No, the way I see it, what I  _need_  is a TARDIS, and seeing as how your bucket of bolts is the only one left, it’ll have to do,” the Master snarled, stalking towards the console.

                The Doctor sighed, jerking at the cuff around his wrist, trying to wriggle away. “So what? You take me prisoner instead?”

                The Master didn’t answer him, but something had shifted. His expression was drawn, a hand scrubbing over his face, and abruptly he turned away where the Doctor could no longer see him. Tugging on the cuffs, hoping the clink of metal would keep the Master from noticing he was retrieving his screwdriver from a pocket, he pointed out, “It doesn’t have to be like this all the time.”

                “Doesn’t it though? It always,  _always_ did,” the Master snarled. There might have been more, but the Doctor watched him touch the console and jolt in pain, turning his head to glare. “What did you  _do_?”

                “Do? I didn’t do anything?” the Doctor insisted, shifting awkwardly to hide the screwdriver. The Master reached for the TARDIS console again, and the way he flinched away, the Doctor could only assume he’d gotten another nasty shock for his trouble.

                “You can’t blame her for not liking you. It’s not as if you have a great track record,” the Doctor muttered. There it was, the best opening he’d have, and if he were lucky, he could get the lock undone before the Master reached him.

                It was a testament to how unraveled the Master was more than to the Doctor’s stealth that he didn’t even look up. The buzz of the sonic screwdriver seemed like it ought to have gotten the Master’s attention, but when the Doctor glanced over, he was only hunched over the console, clutching at his head. It was hardly the first time the Doctor had seen it lately, but it seemed worse.

                “If you just let me…” The Doctor started, reaching out before he even noticed himself doing it.

                “Just  _leave_  it,” the Master growled through his hands, though the sound was pitiful and exhausted. Whatever came after was rapidly hurtling towards unintelligible, and the Doctor ached for how low he’d been taken.

                His fingers settled against the Master’s shoulder. For just the briefest moment, the Master seemed like he might stay, leaning ever so slightly into the Doctor’s grip. He pulled away just as abruptly, baring his teeth at the Doctor. “Don’t.”

                “I could help if you’d just…” The Doctor tried, but the Master was already retreating. He wondered if it would always be this way, the two of them round about each other, but in the end he only watched the master retreat.


End file.
